Impressions of McCain

Last night, I went to a ritzy country club in southeast Michigan to listen to John McCain speak. His speech was similar to the one he gave at VMI on Wednesday. He spent part of the speech making jokes and being generally affable, and part of the time talking about his two top issues: fiscal accountability and Iraq. I will neglect the obviously partisan stuff that comes part and parcel with receiving funding from the Republican Party. I whole-heartedly agree with his first point on fiscal conservatism. Republicans, who still believe that they stand for fiscal accountability, seem to have lost the vision. They instead support gross over-spending on their own pet projects. McCain spoke of making pork belly politicians "famous" by highlighting their lack of financial discretion. If he can help return the government to some level of financial stability, then he will have succeeded where so many other politicians have failed. Whether he would actually be successful in this is debatable, however. His comments on Iraq reveal a more complicated situation. He still believes in the surge: For the first time in four years, we have a strategy that deals with how things really are in Iraq and not how we wish them to be. I'm not sure the surge is the right answer, but the issue of what to do about the current Iraq situation is still complicated. McCain says that the current Iraq situation is about al Qaeda and terrorists: Whether or not al Qaeda terrorists were a present danger in Iraq before the war, there is no disputing they are there now, and their leaders recognize Iraq as the main battleground in the war on terror. Today, al Qaeda terrorists are the ones preparing the car bombs, firing the Katyusha rockets, planting the IEDs. They maneuver in the midst of Iraq’s sectarian conflict, sparking and fueling the horrendous violence, destroying efforts at political reconciliation, killing innocents on both sides in the hope of creating a conflagration that will cause Americans to lose heart and leave, so they can return to their primary mission — planning and executing attacks on the United States, and destabilizing America’s allies. The verbiage suggests that McCain believes that going to war originally based on the danger of terrorists was flawed. He believes that the concern of terror requires that we continue to fight. From his speech Thursday: "It's not Iraq that they (the terrorists) want, it's us," McCain said. "If we leave Iraq at a specified date of withdrawal, they will follow us home." I'm not sure I follow the logic. It seems that McCain is saying that terrorists were not a threat when we invaded Iraq in 2003, but that they are now? This would suggest that the terrorist threat was created, or at least increased, by the Iraq invasion. This may be partially correct; in fact, this was predicted by Barack Obama in his October 2002 speech in Chicago: I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. This does not, however, explain what should be done regarding the current Iraq situation. McCain says (and I agree) that there are 2 options: 1. Immediately withdraw (of funding specifically, which will result in troop withdrawal) 2. Open-ended occupation (not his words, but the obvious result of the policy) McCain argues that, while withdrawing funding is a legal option that Congress has, but it would be irresponsible. “Many in Washington have called for an end to our involvement in Iraq. Yet they offer no opinion about the consequences of this course of action beyond a vague assurance that all will be well if the Iraqis are left to work out their differences themselves.” It is hard to argue with this logic, but I cannot believe that a long-term occupation in Iraq - make no mistake, this is what we are faced with - is in the best interest of both the US and Iraq. Overall, I thought McCain appeared to be a decent human being, even if I disagree with some of his policies. If McCain can manage to get himself elected (and I don't think that is particularly likely), I wouldn't be as disappointed as I would be with the other Republican candidates. It seems that NRO thinks so as well, as they are up in arms that: The media are almost ready to pronounce his (McCain's) presidential candidacy dead... NRO is involved in their typical bashing of the opposite party, but their optimism is some hope that the Republican party will endorse McCain's candidacy. Andrew Sullivan has this to say about McCain's speeches: It may be that extricating ourselves from the Iraq disaster is indeed the only way to grapple with the wider problems of the war against us. I'm not saying this is obvious; but it's surely debatable - and the balance of the argument now lies with those seeking to escape the trap we have walked right into. McCain still seems to act as if the trap does not exist - or that it won't tighten the more we seek to impose by force what he concedes force alone cannot impose. This analysis has some merit as well. As I said earlier, this is a complicated situation. Extricating ourselves from Bush and Cheney's mess will not be easy. I'm still trying to figure out who would do the best job of this, but I think that McCain has moved up to third or fourth on my list.